About

Game of Zones is an animated web series created by Adam and Craig Malamut and produced by Bleacher Report which parodies the NBA by imagining it as though it took place in a universe similar to that of Game of Thrones. The series has proven popular, running for six seasons through 2019, and generally comes out at the beginning of the NBA playoffs.

History

The first episode of the series was posted to YouTube on May 16th, 2014, gaining over 7.2 million views in five years (shown below). The episode imagined LeBron James as a Lannister-adjacent character and the San Antonio Spurs as the White Walkers.

The series will refer to NBA teams as "House X" (for example, Golden State are "House Warriors"), and much of the material comes from storylines from the preceding offseason. Other popular episodes include a spoof of the Game of Thrones "Red Wedding" episode (shown below, left) and the episode "'Cavs and Cav Nots'" (shown below, right).

In April of 2018, Bleacher Report expanded the production team behind the series, leading to more complex animations and longer episodes in the series' fifth season.^[1]

Online Presence

Game of Zones has proven very popular online. The Malamut brothers were profiled by The New York Times in June of 2018.^[2] Individual episodes have been covered by NBC^[3] and NBA.com.^[4] Episode releases regularly gain thousands of points on Reddit.^[5][6][7] The series does not have individual Facebook, Reddit, or Twitter pages.

Search Interest

External References